A Magical Tessera?

David Atherton · Apr 24, 2016

TIF said: ↑

Random interesting bee-related trivia, found when I was going down various rabbit holes looking for information about the tessera:

'Telling the Bees' is an old English folk custom where honeybees are treated like members of the family and kept up to date with all the goings on. Many of us are familiar with the tradition of telling the bees when someone in the family, especially the bee's primary keeper dies, but traditionally all family news, including births, marriages, etc., and even news about visitors, was told to the bees as a courtesy. There is a caveat to this, you had to be careful who told the bees what; for example only the Bride should tell the bees of an upcoming wedding and not anyone else, no matter how well intentioned they were. It was believed that failure to tell the bees of important news would result in them flying away, dying or stopping honey production. In both Britain and America, honeybees were even invited to Weddings and Funerals, and it they didn't make it, then food and drink from the wake, or a piece of Bridal cake was left by the hive.

This idea of telling the bees goes much deeper than news of births, marriages and deaths. It harks back to the idea that bees are messengers to the divine or to other realms. In many parts of Britain Bees are known as ‘The Little Servants of God’ or ‘The Small Messengers of God’ and this idea of bees as messengers dates back to Greek mythology where a Dryad once sent a message of love to Rhoecus. In Welsh folklore, bees, like man, were considered the only creatures to have come from Paradise and were seen as especially beloved by God.

-from https://bumblebeeconservation.org/news/anthonys-blog/bees-in-folklore

I've heard the phrase before, "telling the bees", but had no idea what it referenced. The context in which I heard it was a bit different but was meant as "tell the family and other important people" some bit of news.
Click to expand...

I never heard of the phrase before or was aware of the custom ... and I come from a family of bee keepers!

To be honest, bee keeping died out in our family when my great grandfather passed away, I was 16 at the time. Reading your post TIF put a smile on my face because I can certainly imagine my grandfather 'telling the bees'. I'll have to ask my mom if she was aware of this.

Great post and thanks for sharing this!

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